ity and
reason must meet and decide the great issue. Hence Dorner passes by the
personal ministry and history of Christ on earth and attempts the proper
mode of construing his person. The Person of Christ is, in the trials
and triumphs of individuals and the church, the central point of the
Christian religion. He is the perfect Lawgiver, and also the Judge of
the world. He controls the universe. Here he communicates the
forgiveness of sins and the Holy Ghost, and in heaven, eternal felicity.
The happiness of heaven is formed by perfect fellowship with his person.
He has left his followers only in appearance, for, wherever two or three
are assembled in his name, there he is in the midst of them. He is with
his own always, even to the end of the world. To know Christ in his
nearness belongs to the Christian worship; and this institution is
appointed for the church as the highest means for the enjoyment of his
nearness.[70]

According to Dorner, heathendom longed for the apotheosis of human
nature. Judaism sought the fulfillment of the revelation not completed
by the law, and strained after the love of God as the consummation of
the holy law. All these wants are met in Christ. He is the innermost
revelation of the mystery, and the fullest condescension of God. For God
has in Christ become man. Here is the point of unity between God and the
world. But Christ did not appear in order to be the Son of God, as if
this were the ultimate end; but the ultimate end was the glorifying of
man, and therewith of God, in and through him. He is officially God's
son.[71]

Was Christ possessed of sinless perfection? In both a physical and
ethical point of view he was not absolutely complete from the first. He
learned obedience. He _grew_ in favor, not only with men but with God.
Growth points backward to previous deficiency, or, what is the same
thing, forward to the absolute goal which the reality approaches only by
degrees. But deficiency in entire perfection is not sinfulness, for then
all real humanity and sinfulness would be identical. Christ's
temptations are explainable on this wise: he had a real moral task, not
only external to himself, but in himself, which could not be solved at
the beginning if he was to be like us. There was no disorder in him, but
there were disorder and sin without him, which occasioned him the
contests, temptations, and sufferings that filled his official life.
These later conflicts were only assigned him